Yesterday, on the train from Den Haag to Paris, I met a guy who told me that Hawai'i had regained its independence from the United States.
After a frantic morning of missed trains, a forgotten bouquet of roses and thistles, and a near-catastrophe involving book six of the Sandman graphic novel series, I finally settled into the plush red velvet of seat 86 of the Thalys, the train transporting me from now-familiar Holland to still-unexplored France. Seat 86 belonged to a group of four seats clustered around a dining table, cleverly foldable as only tables in high-speed trains can be cleverly foldable. A man in a faded ochre shirt and a baseball cap sat in one of the seats across from me on the other side of the table. He was sleeping. As I set the bouquet down on the empty seat next to mine, his eyes opened a fraction and a ghost of a smile graced his weathered face. "Nice flowers. Really nice." He looked like he was in his mid- to late-thirties.
It was a three-and-a-half hour trip. I tried to appreciate the landscape as much as I could (after all, isn't that what travelling is supposed to be about?) but the endless succession of power lines, green fields, and small towns verging---and only verging---on the picturesque wore on me. I alternated between taking notes from the new book that I had ordered online (
Art and Science, which I highly recommend, by Sian Ede), reading more Sandman, and sleeping.
At some point during the trip, the man across from woke up. He had eyes the colour of ferns. We got to talking, and he told me that he was from Hawai'i. He also said that Hawai'i was now independent.
I asked him what he meant. He said, "It's independent. We won our indepedence back about a year ago."
I was incredulous. Why have I not heard of this before? I'm pretty bad nowadays when it comes to keeping current on world events, but surely I would have heard of this even by word of mouth. At the very least, First Nation groups in British Columbia would have had some big to-do if this had happened.
But I sat enthralled (and, in spite of myself, believing) as he told me how native Hawai'ians, in a bid to control the economic destiny of the island chain, had moved "away from casinos" and into banking. Once they gained control of the economy, they kicked off a lot of the white landowners by valuing their property much more than what the landlords could afford to pay by way of property taxes. Land was taken away from non-native Hawai'ians. Visitors now have to pay extra tax to visit or live on the islands. Clinton midwifed some of these sweeping reforms, and the Bush administration helped settle some remaining issues. Best and most surprising of all, the descendents of the white interlopers left without much fuss. "There was nothing they could do about it," said the man across from me. "What are they going to do? Press charges against a sovereign nation?"
I asked him about relationships between native Hawai'ians and non-native minorities like Filipinos who worked the plantations early in the 20th century. Sure the latter are foreigners but they were not really part of the oppressive regime. He said that relations were cordial, especially since there have been intermarriages anyway. But now only individuals with proven Hawai'ian ancestry (he mentioned DNA testing at some point) could own land.
He seemed like a no-bullshit kind of guy who knew what he was talking about. He told me that he had been travelling around the world for the past year now; that he worked in banking; that he had money deposited in a bank in the Netherlands that he checks up on once in a while. ("Hey Herr Banker, how's my money? Fine? Good. Well, I'm off to Budapest then.") At some point he took out an electronic device the size of a very big wallet. It was a foldable device, and it was folded at the time, so the screen and the keyboard (if it had them at all) were hidden from view. It looked like one of those multilingual dictionaries, and I told him so. He said, "Well, it was given to me when I worked for the Federal banking system. I can't tell you what it is."
I was so impressed and inspired by him and his tale that I promised and myself that I would look this all up on the internet when I got into Paris.
And I did, and all I came up was
this. As far as I can make out, Hawai'i isn't an independent nation yet. It looks like it was all one big yarn.
But what a yarn, eh? A dream of struggle, redemption, and triumph. My theory is this: this guy was a master storyteller who believed in the power of stories to change realities. If he tells the story enough times, and if enough people believed in it, maybe his story would come true.
